


Cope(acetic)

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Bad Days, F/M, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Ishval Civil War, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 21:42:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15204071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: They both, somehow, survive the war.





	Cope(acetic)

_“We will get through this together,” she insists. “When you get back to base, or I do, we’ll find each other, okay?”_ \- from “start the future”

 

Someone is watching her. Riza can feel it. And it isn’t the lustful, jealous looks of the male soldiers out here on the battlefield who snicker and joke about her, knowing full well that she can hear them. They reach out to grope sometimes, especially when they’re deep in the bottle, but after she pistol-whipped one and broke another’s wrist, most of them know not to mess with her.

Riza picks up her dinner tray and looks over her shoulder, where Roy stands awkwardly just inside the entrance of the mess tent. Something flits over his face when he sees her, the shadow of a smile. Riza smiles back. It is an exhausted, guilty kind of smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, but there can’t be any other kind out here, so it’ll have to be enough. He stands up a little straighter when she meets his eyes, and Riza stands up, dinner tray still in hand.

Major Roy Mustang is a male soldier, he far outranks her, and he is deep in the bottle at least half the time. Despite this, Riza walks over to him.

“You can finish your dinner, Private,” Roy says softly.

“I’m not very hungry. Sir.”

Roy snorts. “We’re playing that game, are we?”

“It’s not a game, sir. This is…” War. The military. Their _life_.

“I know,” Roy says, and his voice is rough and she wonders just how long he’s been out in the field. She studies him. He’s covered in a layer of dust and ash, and there’s a bright red gash down his cheek. “Shrapnel,” he whispers, when she reaches up to run her finger lightly over the injury.

“You’re okay?” she asks.

Last night, he’d been on the edge of falling apart (maybe _over_ the edge, she’s forced to admit), but he seems a little bit steadier now. He’s still got that haunted darkness in his eyes, but he did find her, just like she told him to.

“You should eat,” she tells him, but he shakes his head, and she sets the dinner tray on a nearby table as his grip on her wrist tightens.

“I don’t want food right now.”

She nods her understanding.

He has a tent to himself, all the State Alchemists do, and Riza knows how to find it even though it’s nowhere near the part of camp where she sleeps with all the other enlisted men.

Roy manages to refrain from touching her until they’re in that small tent, maintaining the weak illusion that they are not doing what they are so obviously doing.

“Riza,” he pleads, as he sits down on the military cot that takes up most of the space. She sits down next to him. She reaches up to undo the clip that keeps her hair out of her face, and it falls down, into her eyes and brushing her shoulders.

Roy kisses her. The heat of the kiss explodes like a firework, and Riza gasps. Roy increases the pressure of his lips on hers, until neither of them can breathe. Riza tenses, trembling, and she puts her hand on his shoulder and _pushes_ , until he breaks away. Roy doesn’t look at her. Riza can practically feel the guilt rolling off of him.

“Roy…” she says quietly. When he still doesn’t respond, she grabs his arm and twists him around to face her. His breathing is sporadic, unsteady. He tries to turn away again, but Riza puts her hand on his cheek and holds his gaze, at least until his eyes slip closed. “Roy, look at me,” she demands. His eyes open slowly. Riza has never imagined anyone could hate themselves as much as Roy Mustang does. But she can’t lose him, won’t lose him, even - _especially_ \- not to himself. “You’re not going to hurt me, Roy, I’m not that fragile. This was my idea, remember?”

Roy nods. “Good,” Riza insists. She runs her thumb over the seams of his uniform, and then she starts pulling off the jacket. These outfits were never designed for the desert heat of Ishval. “That’s better, isn’t it?” she asks, as he sits there on the edge of the cot in his undershirt. He nods, still looking slightly dazed. Riza frowns. She will not ask him what happened on the battlefield, because that is the rule they have both set. But it kills her to see what it does to him.

Roy takes on more guilt than any person Riza has ever seen, it is going to be the end of him one day. But at least she knows that he won’t leave her. He’d feel too guilty. Because she made him swear he wouldn’t, because he won’t let himself take the easy out. Her eyes find the gun in the holster strapped to his leg, and that’s the next piece of the uniform she removes. She sets gun and holster both gently on the small, rickety table next to his cot.

She kneels in front of him, and unzips his pants. Roy neither protests nor tries to stop her. She takes his length in her hand and runs her thumb up and down the shaft, before making soft circles around the sensitive tip. Roy draws in a sharp breath, and Riza looks up. “Want me to stop?”

He shakes his head frantically and catches her head with his hand. He pushes her between her legs, and Riza bobs her head in a nod, understanding what he wants. She takes his penis gently in her mouth. Her tongue runs up and down his length until he’s shivering and thrusting, trying to get more heat, more friction, more satisfaction. His fingers clutch her hair, almost pulling, almost painful.

She starts to suck, listening as Roy moans with desperate almost-pleasure. “More, Riza,” he begs her. “More.”

She’s almost choking. She works her lips around his dick. His hand grinds into the sheets of his cot. Riza rocks back a little on her heels. Then she’s moving, forward and back, giving him a rhythm to anticipate. His breathing comes in shallow gasps and he’s pulling her closer to him, and Riza feels like every hair on her entire body is standing up, and Roy groans and cries and urges her to move faster, and she does, and they crash like a breaking wave. Riza swallows hard as Roy comes, and the taste of him is sticky and salty in her mouth. She finally lets herself breathe.

“Would it be completely stupid to say thank you?” Roy asks, after she’s brushed her hair out of her face and perched herself atop his footlocker. And even though he still sounds exhausted and haunted and half-broken, the words themselves prove to Riza that he will probably make it through this war after all.

She shakes her head and flashes a grin at him and she can’t control her laughter, she is shaking with it. “You’re an idiot,” she accuses.

He kneels on the cot, leaning over so that he can kiss her, slow and deep. “Thank you,” he tells her, honestly.

Riza nods, because what is she supposed to say, ‘you’re welcome’?

* * *

 The next day, she finds him. He’s sitting on a supply crate, sharing a cigarette with Captain Hughes, but he hands it back to the other man and walks over to her as soon as she turns the corner. Hughes flashes them both a knowing smile and waves cheerfully. Riza rolls her eyes.|

“Hughes is good people. He won’t tell anyone.”

Riza snorts. “You think I’m worried about getting in trouble? What are they going to do, send me to Ishval?”

“You shouldn’t joke about this,” Roy says quietly, sounding wounded.

“Command doesn’t give a damn about who’s fucking who. As long as we pull the trigger when they tell us to.” It is dangerously close to talking about the battlefield.

“I heard it was hard fighting in your sector this morning,” Roy says. His voice is still barely pitched above a whisper.

“Shut up, Mustang.” Riza demands.|

Neither of them talk for the rest of the walk to his tent, and Riza is already kicking off her pants before they’re even through the entrance. Roy carefully takes off his gloves and stuffs them in the pocket of his pants, then takes off his jacket and throws it on top of her pants. That business done, he pulls her against his chest, listening as she lets out a long, slow breath. Roy rests his hand on her thigh, and she twists to bring her sex closer to him. He laughs a little, and brushes a kiss over her lips. He moves his hand over her triangle, teasing it through the thin fabric of her underwear.

“For fuck’s sake, Roy,” Riza murmurs.

Roy takes a bite at the tip of her ear, holding it between his teeth. “Be nice to me,” he warns.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” she hisses through clenched teeth.  
  
Roy tugs at her underwear, sliding it down over her hips. He puts his hand flat against her inner thigh, slowly inching it upward as Riza squeezes her legs together to trap him there. He shakes his head, and with his free hand smacks her bottom, hard enough to sting but not to hurt her. She relaxes, her mouth a little open in a look of surprise, her eyes bright, driving him wild. “Stay still,” he tells her, and she nods.

His fingers dance over her labia, until she’s moaning and squirming and panting in his ear. He slides one finger, then two, inside her, and she welcomes him easily. He flicks his fingernail against her clit, then moves his fingers in and out, pushing deeper each time. Riza scratches the back of his neck and lets out a breathless, wordless plea that makes his knees weak. His thumb presses up against her clit, and he traces tight circles until she’s moaning and begging and grinding against him. He works her until her sticky orgasm explodes all over his hand, and then he slides his fingers out and sticks them into his mouth and sucks, as he sits down on the cot.

She sits down next to him, and he can still smell her sex. It's on his breath, still. He runs his tongue up her neck, and she flinches away. She reaches over to slide his dick out through the opening in his pants. He is, unsurprisingly, hard and throbbing. It takes her less than a minute to get him off, it’s almost embarrassing.

He lays down and waits for Riza to join him. But she doesn’t. She stays sitting at the foot of the flimsy bed. He sits up on his elbow. “Riza?”

“What?” She shakes her head, and leans her head forward so that her hair falls into her face. So that he can’t _see_ her face. “I’m good, Roy,” she insists.

He’s got his arm around her before she can protest. “You’re not,” he observes. She’s crying, in fact, he can feel the splash of tears soaking onto his shirt. He’d almost forgotten what water of any kind felt like, they’ve been in this hell so long.

“Bad day,” she says simply, and it is the understatement of the fucking century but Roy just nods, because he gets it.

He twists her hair around his fingers, at the nape of her neck. “Can I… help?”

“I don’t see how.”

He plants a kiss on the top of her head, and gets up to fumble around in the footlocker. He pulls out the remainder of his bottle of vodka and hands it to her without a word. Riza takes a deep swig, then hands it back to him.

“Keep it,” he tells her. She nods.

* * *

The next day, they avoid each other, because they are both too broken and guilty and the situation is so fucked that they don’t deserve to feel better.

* * *

 The day after that, Roy finds her cleaning her gun on the barricade, and they barely make it back to his tent before he fucks her raw, and he lets her bite and scratch and claw, and they are both on fire with desperate longing that fades to a slow burn as the sun comes up.

* * *

 

Riza has the highest kill count in the army, at least among the non-Alchemists.

Roy wipes out the Ishvalan Resistance at a pace that has the enlisted men whispering about him like he’s not even human.

They keep finding each other.

They both, somehow, survive the war.

* * *

 A year later, they catch each other’s eye across the stage as they’re both presented with medals for combat valor, Central Command making a big celebration of the anniversary of Ishval’s broken surrender.

  
That night, Riza finds Roy drinking himself into a stupor in his office, and she puts her hand on his cheek and makes him look at her. “Same deal, Mustang?” she asks carefully. “We find each other?”  
  
Roy nods, drunk and dazed. And Riza smiles.   


End file.
